Wraith

This page is under construction. The following information may be incomplete. The Wraith has been reworked in https://github.com/goonstation/goonstation/pull/10773. This page is awaiting upadate, for now please refer to the linked github page for information about the new specialisations and abilities.

Where most other antagonist roles exist to make you afraid of some maniac with a fire extinguisher coming to get you, the Wraith exists to make you afraid of the station itself. Whether it's malevolent poltergeists with a mean streak a mile wide, otherworldly creatures hunting you from the dark, or plagues of rot and grime that will make medical look clean, wraiths have a wide array of spooky powers they can use to terrorize (or annoy) the crew. Given enough time and corpses (and given all the other baddies they appear with on Space Station 13, there will be corpses), they can progress from an inconvenience to a terrifying juggernaut of murder. They have their downsides, though, and a clever chef with some salt can be far more dangerous to a wraith than an army of supercops armed to the teeth.

Base Wraith Abilities

First and foremost, wraiths are ghosts. They cannot be seen by the living unless manifested, they can hear everything on the station, they can talk to and see normal ghosts, fly through walls, all of it. They can use their powers while incorporeal as well, and are effectively invulnerable in this state. When wraiths use the Haunt ability or float over salt, they manifest in a physical form for about minute, able to be injured and even killed. If killed while manifested, though, a wraith isn't necessarily dead. Wraiths can survive being banished from physical form once - the second time kills them for good.

Wraiths can also move items by click-dragging them from one tile to another, similar to the Telekinetic Pull genetics ability. This can not only do minor damage depending on the flung item, but also set up dangerous animated/possessed item rampages if left unnoticed.

Wraith abilities work off the creatively named Wraith Points, or WP, a resource that passively increases over time. The rate of regeneration can be permanently increased by absorbing corpses, or temporarily increased by using Haunt near a crowd or possessing a Revenant. There's no upper limit to banked points or regeneration rate, but banishment resets both.

Listed below are the basic abilities a wraith is granted before choosing one of the three paths, and will be maintained once the new path is chosen. Alterations to any base powers will be listed in its appropriate section.

Icon	Name	Cooldown	WP Cost	Description
	Haunt	60 seconds	0 Points	Temporarily become corporeal to scare people and/or gloat. This ability will remain active until used again, with the second use returning you to your incorporeal state. Every witness present gives you an increased rate of WP regeneration.
	Whisper	2 seconds	1 Point	Send a spooky ghost message to somebody, which they hear as "A netherworld voice whispers in your ear..." This, alongside Blood Writing, is your only way to communicate with the living.
	Blood Writing	5 seconds	10 Points	Draws a single letter or pictogram of your choice on tile, complete with fancy animation.
	Absorb Corpse	45+ seconds	20 Points	Skeletonizes a targeted corpse in a cloud of black smoke with a big red message, and permanently increases your rate of WP regeneration. Must be used on a relatively fresh corpse. Cooldown starts at 45 seconds and scales exponentially with each use, but is reset by banishment. Doesn't work when the corpse has at least 25 units of formaldehyde inside it, instead removing it from the corpse and activating the cooldown.
	Spook	30 seconds once activated	20 Points to Mark	The first use Marks an area, and the second use lets you choose a spooky thing to do to that area: Flip light switches: Self-explanatory. Light switches that are on turn off and off on. Burn out lights: Breaks up to four light tubes and bulbs in the area, creating sparks that can ignite flammables. Create smoke: Creates multiple clouds of smoke near you that can completely obscure people's vision and make them drop whatever they're holding. Clouds persist for about a minute. Create ectoplasm: Spawns a few globs of ectoplasm in the area. Sap APC: Drains a bit of power from the area's APC. The higher your WP regen rate, the more power drained. Cannot drain multiple APCs. Haunt PDAs: Everyone in the area gets cheesy spooky PDA messages with you as their sender. Open doors, lockers, crates: Opens and closes a few random doors, lockers, and crates in the area. Random: Does one of the above.
	Decay	60 seconds	30 Points	An ability with two different functions: Used on living humans, it drains a significant amount of stamina. Used on inanimate objects, it EMAGs them if possible.
	Command	20 seconds	50 Points	Hurls a few nearby loose objects at the chosen target.
	Animate Object	30 seconds	100 Points	Causes an object to come to life and try to murder anything and everything nearby.
	Possess Object	150 seconds	300 Points	Puts your consciousness inside an object for a limited time, letting you fly it around and use it to murder people, all while taunting them (somehow).
	Evolve	0 seconds	150 points	Once three souls are obtained, the Evolve ability can be used to pick one of the three evolution paths: Harbinger, the summoner. Plaguebringer, the rot. Trickster, the illusionist.

Wraith Paths

Past the basic wraith form, three unique paths are available in the form of an ability in its original power set. Each has their own ability set granted on top of the base wraith's, allowing for different styles of gameplay. The different forms also have their own weaknesses to go along with their individual strengths.

Path 1: The Harbinger

This particular path focuses on summoning, with most of its additional abilities being dedicated to raising the dead or void-like beings. They can be identified through their summons, listed below.

Icon	Name	Cooldown	WP Cost	Description
	Raise Skeleton	60 seconds	100 Points	Commands the skeleton inside a corpse to detonate out and free its brothers still trapped in the living. By murdering them. Best used in combination with Absorb Corpse, because only completely decomposed cadavers can be raised as skeletons. This ability can also be used on closets, spawning one skeleton per closet.
	Create Void Portal	180 seconds	150 Points	Creates a summoning circle that slowly grows in power, and releases a small army of mobs the wraith can choose from a list: Skeletons Bats Lions Brullbars Bears Monstrosity crawlers Shades Ancient repairbots Ancient things Heavy gunner drones As the power of the portal increases, the mobs will steadily grow stronger as well. However, they decrease in frequency as they gain strength. Mobs summoned and portal power is reset when the ability is used again.
	Summon Void Creature	150 seconds	400 Points	Sends a request to ghosts of players to join and offers a choice between three creatures to pick from, meant to aid the harbinger: Skeleton commanders: A tanky mob with a long range stab, a sweeping strike, a raise minor skeleton ability, and a rally ability buffing nearby critters. Tentacle fiends: A lower health, ranged mob with a tentacle hook to bring people to them, and a "lash" usable on disabled people to keep them on the ground and cause a lot of bleeding damage. Void hounds: A fast, sneaky mob with a leap that stuns targets for a short time, a cloak making them semi-transparent, and a strong lacerating arm. Lower health than the former two summons.
	Raise Revenant	300 seconds	1000 Points	Allows you to possess a corpse and empower it as a Revenant, so you can murder people with their co-workers. Must be used on a relatively fresh corpse.
	Speak to Summons	0 seconds	0 Points	Allows the Harbinger to speak to player summons that have spawned.

Countering a Harbinger:

Because most of the Harbinger's damage is physical, wearing armor while combatting it can strongly benefit you. A good melee weapon can do the trick against both it and its summons - just be sure not to let the void hounds and tentacle fiends get hold of you. In addition, the Harbinger is weak to salt, forcing it to manifest when crossed. Spirit candles can also give you the upper hand when countering this wraith path.

Poltergeists

Basically, mini-wraiths. When this ability's used, it sends a prompt to all eligible Ghosts asking if they want to be a poltergeist; the criteria as same as the one for random event antags (i.e. not DNR, not logged out), but it doesn't accept dead Antagonists. Shortly thereafter, the game then randomly picks from those who accepted the offer and spawns them as a poltergeist with randomly-generated names like "Lritho the Trickster" and snazzy animations. Poltergeists are considered antagonists, and they should follow the orders of their master, the wraith that spawned them.

Poltergeists function much like wraiths. They can pass through walls and other solid objects but can't see through walls, and if they past over a salt pile, they'll get manifested. The wraith telekinesis passive is passed down to poltergeists, which allows them to move objects by click-dragging the item from one tile to another. They also get the following Wraith abilities:

• Animate Object
• Blood Writing
• Command
• Decay
• Haunt (slightly different in that it manifests them for 15 seconds, rather than 30)
• Spook
• Whisper

Poltergeists can also click on their master to automatically follow them, still being able to use their abilities as if they were still at their anchor beacon.

Poltergeists also have one unique ability called Retreat, which will allow the poltergeist to immediately fall back to either their Wraith master or their anchor. This costs 100 WP to do.

Aside from Haunt having shorter duration, these abilities are otherwise same as the Wraith versions, i.e. same cooldown, same point cost, and same functionality. Notice they have no Raise Skeleton, no Absorb Corpse, no Possess Object, and no Raise Revenant.

If a poltergeist strays 15 tiles from the portal or 12 tiles from the Wraith that spawned them, they take damage up to 50% of their health as well as not being able to cast certain abilities. Unlike the Wraith, they can only die once; one death and they're back to being a regular Ghost.

Revenants

A Revenant is a telekinetically controlled corpse-puppet used by wraiths to step their game up from dangerous pranks to full-throttle massacres. Wraiths inhabit fresh corpses to create revenants, which provide them with a physical body to interact with the world freely. This allows for a much, much broader ability to screw with the station, as a wraith can temporarily do anything a normal traitor could, like mixing up horrible concoctions at a chemistry machine or rigging giant bombs.

Revenants enjoy an increased rate of WP regeneration, stun immunity, ignore stamina penalties, lose their normal set of powers, and gain a smaller, much deadlier set while active. However, they constantly lose health and cannot be healed, so your time is limited. Visually, revenants are easily identified by their distinct sinister black aura, and upon "death", they dissipate into black smoke.

Icon	Name	Cooldown	WP Cost	Description
	Push	30 seconds	50 Points	Shoves the targeted victim or object away from you, dealing damage if they collide with something.
	Mass Command	30 seconds	300 Points	Like Command, only it throws a LOT more nearby objects at the target.
	Shockwave	30 seconds	750 Points	Emits a large shockwave that knocks people down, destroys windows, and strips the plating off nearby walls and floors.
	Touch of Evil	30 seconds	1000 Points	Temporarily gives you an ENORMOUS damage buff to punches, and punches knock people across the room.
	Crush	60 seconds	2500 Points	The target immediately collapses and begins to take a huge amount of brute damage over time as their bones crack and their body implodes. The victim explodes into gibs once this damage becomes lethal, but the process is interrupted if they are removed from your line of sight or you move (or are moved).

Wraith Weaknesses

Wraiths are slippery bastards, but like proper ghosts, have one major weakness: regular ol' table salt. Lines of salt on the ground force an incorporeal wraith that passes over them to manifest, and so can be used to protect chokepoints, force a wraith into a trap, and trip up a wraith that's not paying attention to where they're going. It should be noted, however, that salt lines can be disrupted by bungling idiots running across them, giving the wraith a chance to sneak through. Walking does not scuff up a tile full of salt. Would-be ghostbusters are well advised to lay their salt lines across walls, with redundant layers, and/or in low-traffic areas. Make sure to alert people to the importance of using the walk intent on salt while beating the bejesus out of politely reprimanding those who don't listen.

In addition, Haunt heavily incentivizes manifesting near a bunch of people to get an extra infusion of WP, and a physical wraith is extremely vulnerable. They are slow, have no hands, and have only their basic powers to fight back against someone who wants them dead. Priestly exorcisms aren't necessary when a barrage of laser fire will banish a corporeal wraith very quickly.

That's not to say priestly exorcisms don't help, though! The chaplain enjoys immunity to many of a wraith's tricks, which lets them fight on even footing with an opponent that otherwise fights very dirty. Chaplains still need to rely on ambushing a wraith using Haunt or luring them over salt, but once a wraith is manifested, they can beat the bejesus out of it with their bible to banish it with the speed of lasers. They can even fight toe to toe with revenants, as they can't be Crushed, knocked or Pushed back, knocked down with Shockwave, and can use the bible to deal large amounts of damage. A wraith's best bet against a particularly relentless chaplain is to use ghostly mobility to go spook people somewhere the chaplain isn't, and failing that, take merry advantage of the fact that the chaplain's immunities don't cover them from indirect methods of attack.

Consider also whipping up several batches of formaldehyde as well. When over 25 units is injected into a body, not only will it prevent decomposition, but when a Wraith attempts to use Absorb Corpse on it the effect will fail, removing the formaldehyde from the body and making harmless white smoke. Keep in mind however that formaldehyde will not prevent a wraith taking control of a body as a revenant.

Wraiths can only survive a single banishment - going down a second time permanently puts them out of commission. To make matters worse for them, when banished, they lose all of their built-up WP and, far more cripplingly, any WP regeneration bonuses from Absorb Corpse. The consolation prize is that Absorb Corpse's cooldown is reset as well. They may not have a second chance to get as strong as their first manifestation, by sheer virtue of there being fewer usable corpses. Wraiths may want to keep one or two hidden corpses around as insurance just in case they're banished.

As for revenants, for all their horrifying power when given sufficient WP to fuel their mojo, they are still rotting corpses. They're slow and incredibly obvious, and will eventually fall apart into a pile of bones even if left alone. That said, they're still superb at murdering isolated people because of Push, Touch of Evil, and Crush and can handle small crowds with Mass Command and Shockwave. Unless you're a particularly gutsy chaplain, getting into a fistfight with a revenant is an incredibly bad idea - running away and firing lasers or buckshot wildly is a far more effective strategy. Try to get the AI to lock it down in an isolated room if possible, and pray it doesn't have the WP reserves to just blast a hole through the walls and doors anyway. When in doubt, run for your life, because anybody who gets killed by the revenant (except victims of Crush) is leaving a corpse behind that will fuel the wraith if left alone.

Wraith Tips and Strategy

• You are not invincible, no matter how much it may seem like it sometimes. It only takes one twitchy guy with a weapon in his backpack and a salt shaker to ruin you.
• There exists at least one free corpse on the station every round. Eat it first!
• Wraiths don't appear alone, so try to lay low for a little while and look for the other antagonists. Scavenge the corpses they'll inevitably leave in their wake for more WP regeneration, or try to strike deals with them with Whisper. A wraith with someone to feed it a steady stream of corpses can get very, very scary, but be warned that some antagonists might not trust you to not murder them and raise the alarm on you.
• Revenants get faster WP regeneration, but their abilities still cost a shitload of points. Try to raise a decent buffer of points and regeneration before going nuts with a revenant instead of beelining for the first corpse you see the second you hit 1000 points.
• Plan for things going terribly. You may not want to absorb every corpse you find just in case you get banished, but you may not want to leave any corpses undrained either in case the crew gets wise and starts spacing/gibbing/reclaiming corpses immediately.
• You're not that great at outright killing people without becoming a revenant, isolating someone, or being lucky. Be a scavenger; try to make a bad situation worse for someone already pretty fucked up rather than try to kill a healthy person. The crew will amaze you with how many ways they can kill themselves.
• The skeleton from Raise Skeleton is extremely fragile, and will die in one hit to just about anything, but is incredibly strong and knocks people down very easily. Use it to gang up on someone who can't fight back.
• Shockwave gives Mass Command tons of scrap metal and broken glass to hurl at people.
• You can't use Decay on a Cyborg to remove its laws. You can use it on a cyborg frame to make the borg it's built from have no laws.

Possession Quirks

• Any object that can deal damage can be used to attack a human. ANY object.
• Any object that can interact with other objects by being used on them can be done with a possessed item. Be careful, inserting something into something else will kick you out.
• Any object that can be used by clicking on it can be activated by clicking yourself (if that fails use Page Down or whatever "use item in hand" is). You can be a self-playing saxophone... or a self-detonating grenade/pipe bomb.
• You ignore salt while possessing an item (or a Revenant). In fact, as a possessed item, you can scuff up salt piles on the floor, removing them.
• Mechanics or QM massing lasers to deal with you/another antagonist? Possess one and laugh with sadistic glee when you realize it can still shoot things.
• If you possess food or drinks, you can force-feed yourself to people. Let the chef know what people REALLY think of his cooking.
• You can talk as a possessed item, and if you possess a radio headset or station-bounced radio, you can talk over the radio! Gloat and crackle like a supervillian to those lowly mortals without any fear of the retaliation a regular mortal villian would receive.
• You can manually leave the item by clicking the red X in the corner. Good for a quick possession and then abandoning the item so you don't get caught.
• If you possess an AI law module, you can upload whatever law was written on it simply by clicking on an Upload computer. You can click on yourself to set a law. The applications of this should be immediately obvious.

Dick Moves

• Use Decay on Beepsky, and on his victims if they try to run. Watch the fireworks.
• Haunt can give you a ton of WP when used in a large crowd, but a large crowd is also in prime position to wreck you when you're at your most vulnerable. Try haunting just out of reach of a few people, like behind a table, window, or door, or in space nearby. Not only is it effective, but also it annoys the shit out of people! Just make damn sure the AI won't open the door for them, or that they won't zap you with lasers through the windows.
• Whenever someone has a gun drawn, use Command to knock them down and immediately Possess the gun and shoot them with it.
• Use Command to throw exploding tomatoes. They will chain-reaction and destroy the entire stack and Botanists will fucking hate you (the ones you don't kill with a possessed chainsaw immediately after, that is).
• If someone is making loaves, wait for them to make a high-tier one and Command it at them for an effectively instant kill.
• Spook may seem harmless, but some cunning applications can save your ass or cause mass chaos in a clutch. For instance: try Possessing the fire extinguisher in Toxins Storage, bashing open a plasma tank, then using Spook to pop a few lightbulbs.
• Is the chaplain pissing you off? Command and Mass Command may not work on them when you click them directly, but if they're stunned, standing still, or distracted by animated objects, targeting the floor under them works just as well.